So, Melisma? It used to be that I thought a lot like that.
Amarr treat Sabik practice harshly. They may show mercy enough to try to save whom they can once organized resistance crumbles, but not a single tear is shed for those laser fire burns down. And even afterward, for the blood priests and those who were given a conscious choice between Amarr and Sabik, and chose the latter? The normal punishment is death.
It seemed like a needless waste of life to me. Only, after coming in contact with the Sabik myself, I now think of that as that a reasoned, measured, rational response.
For the Amarr, this fight is existential, and not just in this world; it’s a fight for their nation’s soul, and they take to it with grim determination. Not only is it a permanent (un)civil war against an ancient ideological enemy and a fight for their integrity of their faith, but it’s also painfully personal. Most Sabik are kin of one kind or another to one or many faithful Amarr, and the Sabik use this angle without shame or mercy, whether to drag family down with them or to torment their foes-- say, by snatching up Uncle Anhir and returning him to Aunt Ettie in small monthly installments, accompanied by proof of continued, anguished life.
In the end, the Sabik are a power cult whose one consistent theme is that individual power is all and that therefore the strong owe nothing to the weak, but should use them as they please, while, in turn, the weak owe nothing to the strong but fear, and should therefore be continually plotting to overthrow their masters and become strong themselves. It’s not so much a wrong insight as a corrosive and myopic one, a jagged shard of partial truth that cuts more viciously than any lie probably could.
They’re everything the Matari see in the Amarr, but unleavened by any sense of duty to their captives. At its height, this moves into the sort of occultism that sheds blood enthusiastically in the expectation that if you torture and murder enough people surely something interesting will happen.
Even the milder versions of their belief are a problem, because even if they only see and present themselves as harmless self-help cults and so on, they carry the seeds of something terrible.
Their belief system is utterly corrosive, obliterating the social bonds of trust, duty, and mutual reliance that lie at the root of an ordered society. It’s the Takmahl path: at best, they can hope for a brilliant, soaring ascent and a short age of ambition-driven wonders, followed by civil war and total collapse. There’s basically nothing significant left of the Takmahl but their artifacts.
(Interestingly, Dr. Valate and I seem to see this the same. Just, to me, this invalidates Sabik practice as an influence in a stable, healthy society. She thinks this miserable pattern is just how God wants people to live.)
As someone with an interest in world religions, I did once contemplate spending a little while among them, to study. That’s been off the agenda for a while now. As for Ms. Blackwind …
There might be hope. She’s definitely not Funk, and I admire Else a little for trying. But as long as she clings to this destructive worldview-- especially if it’s framed the way she seems to, as revenge against the world-- what she’s walking is a path of existential despair.
Empty. Pointless. … Steeped in suffering, yet meaningless.